Showing posts with label Flooding. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Flooding. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Of Water and Worms

“A three year old child is a being who gets almost as much fun out of a fifty-six dollar set of swings as it does out of finding a small green worm.” - Bill Vaughn

It finally stopped raining just before dark yesterday. Thank HEAVENS. I hadn't been out at all over the weekend, but ventured out yesterday to go to the library. It was an adventure.

You see, from my house, there are two routes to get to the library (unless I want to go WAY around, which I almost thought I was going to have to do yesterday). One of those routes floods if there is high humidity, so they typically detour us around to the other one.

Yesterday, someone idiot hit-and-run truck driver tried to make the turn off a side road onto the alternate route, was too big and sheared a utility pole, causing it to fall and causing the road to close for pretty much the entire day. So we had to drive through the lake instead.

It's times like that I wish I was driving my 4Runner again -- I would have liked just a little more clearance. DD thought it was an adventure.

Hopefully now that the rain has stopped, things will settle down a bit. But I hope they catch the guy who hit the pole.

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DD had a science experiment assigned to her last fall: an invertebrate zoo. I told her we were NOT keeping an invertebrate zoo all winter ... they suggested spiders and other bugs that, while I don't hate them, I have little desire to keep as pets.

We compromised on earthworms. The problem was, of course, that our ground freezes here so if we kept worms, we'd have to keep them ALL winter. So, we prepared a huge glass jar, wrapped it with a dark towel (that could be lifted to see the worms and worm tracks) and studied up on how to keep the critters alive. And then, after every rainstorm in October, we gathered worms from the road.

The strangest occurrence happened when we used the last of our firewood in February. The bottom pieces had frozen to the driveway pavement and I had to hit them with the maul to loosen them -- and underneath one of them were a PILE of worms! I was so surprised to find them there, alive under the frozen wood. Thankfully we had a new house for them and added them to our jar.

Every couple of weeks when I made dog food, I minced up bits of vegetables to add to the jar for their food, and about every month or so, I microwaved an egg shell and crushed it (worms need calcium... who knew?). Every couple of months, I dumped out the dirt into a huge bowl and we sifted through it to count the worms.

All things considered, we did very well. We lost a few worms, but gained several babies (wow are they TINY). And now that the ground is thawing (and once it's not quite so muddy) we're going to put them out into our garden.

DD is sad. She wants to keep them inside forever.

What's the strangest thing you ever raised?

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You Scored an A



You got 10/10 questions correct.



It's pretty obvious that you don't make basic grammatical errors.

If anything, you're annoyed when people make simple mistakes on their blogs.

As far as people with bad grammar go, you know they're only human.

And it's humanity and its current condition that truly disturb you sometimes.



Actually, bad grammar drives me a little crazy...

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Monday, September 08, 2008

How to Spend an Hour Getting Eggs

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. ~Voltaire

Yesterday... I had a sudden craving for cookies and started mixing. Melted the butter and peanut butter (yum), added the sugar. Creamed. Added the eggs... uh... nope. Out of eggs.

Okay, I'll run up to Agway -- a five minute trip to get nice, inexpensive, local eggs.

Turns out the road was closed at the corner. K-Mart shopping center, as well as the entire road was under water from the remnants of Hannah Saturday evening and night. Okay, that's pretty standard. They always flood when it rains. Well, I don't really want to spend $6 on a dozen eggs, but I don't have a lot of choices, so I'll go to the Natural Foods store near my house.

They're closed.

Fine. No problem. I turned around and headed up the other way, by McDonalds. I can go around on the other side of the Kmart Plaza. That's never flooded before.

Nope. Surprisingly, that road is flooded and closed, too. I not only have no way to get to Agway, I can't get to Walmart or the grocery store either. No problem! I go straight past McDs and take the back roads to the second grocery store in the area. I pull in, surprised to see so few cars in the parking lot. But folks are coming out of the store with bags, so it must be open.

Yes... it IS open. But...

They have no electricity. They're allowing people to shop (in the dark), but they've closed off the aisle with all the perishables to keep the cool in until the power comes back on. So, no eggs for me there.

Okay... I'll hop on the highway and go to BJs one exit up. I go out the front of the store, and look to my left.... the entire street's intersection is underwater! Now, THAT I've never seen before. Obviously, it's shut down so I can't get on the highway.

Now what?

....
....

Now, I do what I should have done from the beginning -- I call my SIL who lives down the road from me and ask if I can borrow two eggs.

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Today's random quiz:




You Are Betty Grable



The ultimate girl next door

You're the perfect girl for most guys

Pretty yet approachable. Beautiful yet real.